Ah, sorry to hear that Peter, that's bad news do you have accidental damage cover in your insurance? I have always had this because of my astro gear, in case of a dropped mount, telescope or CCD camera etc or any other potential way of accidentally damaging expensive gear.
Mike
Thanks mate. I’ll check it out. The hard part will be finding someone who can inspect and report on it for the insurer. It’s not something your local sparkie could be expected to handle. It may be cheaper in the long run to just get out the credit card.
For those still following this thread, I have reached a stopping point. I cannot find another tweak I can make until the rollers arrive - now promised for next week. Heaven knows where they came from. China I suppose.
I have made a template for the pier base (see picture) and cut away a section of the plastic flooring for it. As you can see from the image attached, putting a pier on top of this would be a big mistake.
The pier base has 16mm holes - probably to allow a bit of wiggle room - and I have drilled out 12mm holes for Dyna Bolts. But these can wait until I have installed rollers and cut off the roof from the base.
But all in all, it is a kind of progress. It just isn’t as rapid as I would have liked.
Ah, sorry to hear that Peter, that's bad news do you have accidental damage cover in your insurance? I have always had this because of my astro gear, in case of a dropped mount, telescope or CCD camera etc or any other potential way of accidentally damaging expensive gear.
Mike
Mike, good news on the accident insurance front. Just waiting on Sirius Optics in Brisbane to furnish a report. Looks like a complete write-off so I am hoping to see a Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro (if they ever arrive) since it has the belt drive and although mine was only an EQ6 Pro, I had fitted Rowan belt drives to it. If the insurer will replace like-for-like, I should be able to hope for the R Pro.
Of course, there are none to be had this side of July I believe so I won’t be holding my breath.
Yahoo! It’s alive Doctor! It moves! O.K. there is a little bit of instability now that the roof is no longer providing structural strength - but what the hell. Nothing that a bit of a fiddle can’t solve.
I am so jealous. Of all you Obs Jockeys actually. I like the concept of the RoR to allow a great view of the whole sky. Can't wait to one day make the final move to my own "Foreverness" and then I'll build an obsy too.
The critical moment today - fitting the F8 200mm GSO newt. The OTA is 900mm long BUT when fitted out with ASI focuser , CCD etc, and when tilting it to 27.1 degrees (my latitude) you change the dynamics a lot - enough certainly to swallow up what I thought was my clearance margin. In short, I have to cut away some of the internal bracing I installed. And to add insult to injury, cutting off the roof meant the structural integrity of the base was seriously compromised. So I am now installing extra anchor bolts, and bracings. And I nearly forgot - the scope sits too tall in the mount to allow it to clear the roof at the CWD home position. No big deal. Just a nuisance.
Well folks, it’s as near a damn-it to being operational. It rains here every 15. minutes of so making it hard to get much of a go on. But there is enough of a clearance for the scope to track and do meridian flips without crashing. So that’s a “pass” in my book. If it does crash for some reason, I may need to go to a more compact scope - like a SCT for example. But as soon as we get an hour or two of sky, I will take it for a shakedown cruise. The proof of the pudding being in the eating!
do you have accidental damage cover in your insurance? I have always had this because of my astro gear, in case of a dropped mount, telescope or CCD camera etc or any other potential way of accidentally damaging expensive gear.
